


Integration

by unrealityfreak



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 21:50:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/816430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unrealityfreak/pseuds/unrealityfreak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a cross between an office romance and a hostile alien takeover, and it ends just the way you would expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Integration

**Author's Note:**

> This was just supposed to be a warm-up drabble about Karkat being John's boss and then they kiss. _What happened._
> 
> Trigger warning for mentions of captivity, just in case.

The human walks into Karkat’s office, and already he's sick of it. He thinks it might be male, but he can't make heads or tails of the name on his roster.

"Trebge Nhoj? Nhodge?"

It laughs. "It's written backwards, isn't it? My name is John Egbert, but you can call me John." John thrusts its hand out between them, at waist-height, fingers straight. Karkat has to blink a couple times before he remembers that this is a human greeting custom, and he's about to feel bad for forgetting, but then he sees the look on John's face. Fucker speaks perfect Alternian, even if its accent is shit; of course it knows how to properly greet a troll. Magnanimously, Karkat lets the antagonisation slide with a warning growl. John's grin just gets wider.

Off to a wonderful start, then.

They go through the necessary paperwork and Karkat gives it a cursory overview of its duties. It nods along, only interrupting to ask professional questions, and Karkat is relieved that even if it's an asshole, it seems to be able to do its fucking job.

This relief lasts until John goes for the human hand tangle thing again, and when Karkat grumblingly plays along he's rewarded with a sharp buzzing sensation in the place their palms touch. His first reaction is to curse aloud and snatch his hand back, thinking he'd discovered some weird troll-human incompatibility and wondering if he was now impregnated with its spawn or something. But then John laughs, and holds its hand out so that Karkat can see the little device it's holding, and his vision goes so red he has a hard time dismissing John and sitting back at his desk without breaking one or the other of those things.

Later that night, during his coffee run, he sees John bent over its assigned desk in its assigned cubicle alongside all the other cubicles, and if not for the odd yellowish flesh and the disturbing lack of horns it could almost be just another worker drone. It looks up and smiles at Karkat as he approaches, saying, "Hey, boss. Whatcha got, coffee? You guys' coffee tastes weird."

Karkat narrows his eyes, not sure whether to take that as an insult, and asks, "How many of those reports have you finished?"

John rifles through one of the stacks of paper on the desk and says "Thirty-seven!" way too cheerfully. It makes Karkat irrationally angry.

"You still have a long way to go. Don't disappoint me."

John makes some sort of gesture that Karkat interprets as a human-style salute, or maybe a human-style fuck-you-with-a-rusty-bucket or something. He huffs to himself on his way back to his office and wonders for the umpteenth time why his building was chosen as a testing ground for alien submission training and social integration.

Surprisingly, the human turns in all the work it was assigned at the end of the night, and doesn't try any weird shit when it bids Karkat a good day. As he's locking up on his way out, Karkat catches himself wondering if the purportedly diurnal humans have had to switch to a more troll-like schedule since being allowed to assimilate. If Karkat were expected to work all through the day, he'd be a mess (he knows; he tried to keep up with Sollux once when they were kids), but John seemed perfectly alert. Perfectly annoying. Maybe it's got something to do with warp-lag or the differences in planetary rotation speeds or—

Karkat remembers that he doesn't care, so he stops thinking about it.

***

John is just as efficient and inexplicably grating the next three nights of work. Karkat is glad to have another worker on hand, even if it looks weird as hell and seems to be out to annoy him any time it isn't actively doing anything else. In the safety of his own head, Karkat rants at it for using him as its own personal entertainment, but he knows that he can't ream a cooperative underling until he has at least a tenable reason for doing so. In the past he's made public spectacles out of bluebloods for taking too-long breaks, because the hemospectrum is no longer valid and part of his job consists of enforcing equality, but he isn't sure where John falls on the chain of command. How much liberty can I take with an alien? he wonders. Humans are being billed as a tentative ally, but they're also a species that was conquered shortly before the social reform, and were only recently given some of their freedom back and trusted not to try anything funny.

He decides to just keep a mental tally of the human's little transgressions and wait until they tip the scale into Insufferable Waste Of Space. Then he can fire it or cull it or something.

By the time the human is standing in his office, posture neutral, waiting for Karkat to give it its bi-perigee assessment, the mental tally is still just short of that mark, and he grimaces at it.

"Well, you've made it this long without making me want to rip your limbs off. Your work ethic is sound, and you only have one mark against you for complaints filed by co-workers. What was that all about, anyway?"

John gives a little laugh. "I was just joking with these two in the break room about their moirallegiance, and I guess the humour didn't translate."

"Probably more like they didn't appreciate an alien making jokes about their relationship."

"Oh, yeah, that's probably it." Karkat cannot believe how sincere this thing looks when it considers that. "I'll remember not to stick my nose into quadrant business, then."

"Do you go around sticking your noses into each other's quadrant business on your home planet, or are you just an especially nosy specimen of your kind?"

"Kind of both? Romance isn't as big a deal where I'm from, but I've been told I lack tact."

Its honesty is amusing. Karkat doesn't really know what to say to that, so he grumbles, "Your Alternian is shit," giving voice to a thought he's had many times over the last two perigees.

"Hey, it's not my fault humans don't have the right vocal cords for your clicks and stuff. Unless you want to speak in my language, there's nothing I can do about my accent."

It grates on Karkat's nerves that it zeroed in on what Karkat meant instead of what he said. It knows how good its grammar is. Though it was definitely over-pronouncing things a little bit just then; probably a subconscious attempt to compensate for the way it can't roll its consonants properly. Karkat refuses to grin in triumph.

"I don't speak your retarded language anyway," he says dismissively.

He doesn't get a chance to change the subject, however, before John's saying, "It's not retarded, we're just a younger species than you."

"Whatever," he grunts. "Can you handle a fifteen percent increase in your workload?"

John grins, something about the way its too-soft face pulls around its blunt omnivore teeth making Karkat's gut twist, and nods. "Hell yes I can, sir."

***

Sometime in the next two perigees, Karkat learns that John is in fact male. He's been getting used to having the human around, and while it— _he_ —isn't the fastest learner Karkat's ever met, he does manage to pick up on what's acceptable and what'll earn him demerits or put him in danger of a physical altercation. There have been a couple incidents where Karkat has had to step in and yell at everyone in the vicinity until the high growling died down. John looked more steely than afraid during those little face-offs, but he apologised profusely once everyone was calm, acting like a goof again. It had made Karkat wonder how the human would fare in a real fight against a troll. Or rather, how long he would last before he was killed. After all, the clear keratin at the ends of his fingers looks barely sharp enough to punch through paper.

Luckily, he never finds out exactly how fragile John really is. The human manages to maintain a civil rapport with the rest of the workforce after the initial couple of hiccups, though he has been getting more and more comfortable around Karkat. This is most likely due to Karkat's regrettable inability to just walk away from him. Though, if he's being honest with himself, it's nice to interact with someone who doesn't treat him with thinly-veiled contempt for his blood anonymity or try to ply him with bribes in exchange for leniency or promotion. John doesn't give a shit about the reform, and he doesn't see Karkat as an underdog in a position of undeserved power. He seems to see him as a superior who deserves his respect. Why that is, Karkat doesn't care enough to question.

The one thing he does seem to care about when it comes to the human is his tenacity. No matter what Karkat throws at him, he gets shit done and reports back with energy to spare. Thank you, sir, may I have another. If he were a troll he would have earned a promotion, and here's where the social implications of his species come into the picture again.

Karkat calls him into his office.

"What can I do for you, sir?"

Karkat stopped trying to get him to cut it out with the "sir" thing a long time ago. Something about human customs. Whatever.

"You can submit to an unofficial test." This seems to pique John's interest. "I have been thinking about your position here. You came in at the bottom, like everyone else does. You've been doing any and all work that is asked of you, on and off the record, without fail. Your behaviour isn't horrible. Do you see where I'm going?"

John grins. "Well, I can't say that I know how things work here, but—"

"Bullshit. You know more about the way trolls do things than you let on. This isn't a game. I'm leaving the decision up to you."

John is silent for a beat, and Karkat knows that he's absorbing the challenge. The unspoken threat: if he chooses wrong, he may very well be culled. The reform has introduced a lot of changes, but it's been done in increments, and death is still a large part of life on any planet trolls occupy.

"I think I'll take a small promotion," he says, like he's ordering at a fucking walk-up meal establishment. "But nothing higher than anyone who has been here longer than me."

"You're aware that there are trolls here who've been working under me for sweeps and never taken a single step up the ladder."

"Yes, sir."

It's incredibly hard not to laugh, but Karkat manages it. "You're not as stupid as you look, John."

"Thank you, sir." His squishy face is making a fairly sharp expression, and Karkat stares at it a moment too long.

"Will that be all, sir?"

"Fuck no it will not. There's paperwork to do here."

"Of course." And he steps up to Karkat's desk without asking, without being invited, without fear of reprimand. Karkat would scowl at him if he had any inclination to reprimand him in the first place.

***

John is choking down a mug of coffee in Karkat's office during his break. The faces he's making make him look even more like a half-panned wiggler than he already did, and Karkat is telling him as much.

"I think you're—" and here he says a word that Karkat doesn't understand "—too, Karkat."

"What was that, rotstink?"

"Haha, nothing, just a word in a human language. It means cute."

"Oh fuck you, are you actually trying to flirt with me?"

John laughs, slapping one hand on Karkat's shoulder. Karkat glares at it before shrugging it off.

"It's just a thing I picked up from a friend in captivity."

The two of them are silent for a moment after that, John staring into his coffee.

"Look," Karkat huffs, " if you're not going to finish that then give it here. I could use a chemical boost if you're going to dumb the place up all break."

"Hm? Oh, sure, here." He hands it over, looking placid. It's a little unsettling to think he's wallowing in memories right there in Karkat's office, so Karkat bites the bullet and breaches that last little barrier of professionalism himself, seeing as how John's breached all the others by now.

"So what other useless bullshit did you learn before you came here?"

John comes out of his own head and greets Karkat with a smile and a shrug. "Obviously the first thing we did was learn Alternian. But the schoolfeeding kind of went over my head until a friend of mine helped me out with private lessons. We weren't really allowed to socialise, then, so it was like this rebellion game we played together. She also taught me how to say a few things in, um. It's this human language, you use your hands to talk..."

"Trolls have that too," Karkat says, and John grins.

"Cool. She taught me how to do that, a little bit, so we could talk without getting caught. She would let me braid her hair and stuff, when I got restless, so I got pretty good at that. I had another friend who tried to teach me how to fight, but that didn't last long. It's hard to spar quietly."

"Your life sounds like a badly written movie."

John looks startled. "What, getting captured by aliens and dicking around with your friends?"

"Seems to me like they were a little more than friends."

Infuriatingly, John laughs again, entirely too chipper for just having been reliving his imprisonment. "No way, man. No quadrant business there. They really were just my friends. Except, hmm..." he looks thoughtful, his mouth twisting like he's biting his cheek, which probably hurts less when your teeth are that flat. "The word 'friend' doesn't have the same meaning for us, really. It's like troll friendship, but without the enemy part."

Karkat blinks. "You are making absolutely no sense at this point."

"Ugh, okay, this is a little bit 'Lost in Translation'. Human friendship is totally positive. Like, if you took troll friendship and split it into two separate categories, people who like you and people who can't stand you, human friendship is only that first thing."

"Sure sounds like romance to me."

"But it's not just two people for us. You can have all the human-style like-only friendships you want!"

"That is depraved," Karkat deadpans, mostly kidding.

John makes a sound of frustration again, but he's still smiling. Karkat is definitely not wondering how the hell humans function at all with all that red emotion flying everywhere. He's definitely not thinking about what actual human romance is like. He's definitely not smiling back at John.

The coffee is cold by now, unnoticed on the desk.

***

Karkat seethes toward his office from the vertical transport box, throws open the door, and nearly jumps out of his carapace when a deafeningly high whine sounds off incredibly close to him. He wrenches the door open again and, sure enough...

"EGBERT!"

Out of the dead silence that had descended after the aural blast, he can hear the snickers of the other trolls at John's expense. The human himself comes into his office with a pleasant smile on his face. Doesn't even have the decency to look smug.

"What can I do for you, sir?"

"Don't give me any of that 'sir' crap, Egbert, just tell me _succinctly_ why you felt the need to affix a goddamn airhorn behind my door."

He doesn't even bother playing dumb. "You’ve been stressed out lately. I thought you could use a distraction."

Hands balled into fists, careful not to claw his palms up, Karkat grits out, "I hate you so much sometimes, you presumptuous shiteater."

"Haha, well, I hope it's the platonic kind, because humans don't hate like that."

 _Then stop flirting pitch,_ he thinks, snarling inarticulately. And this is just the rich black icing on the grubcake of all the weird pale-flirting he'd done the other day, telling Karkat about his past, and fuck him, he'd encouraged that, hadn't he? Might as well have been flirting back.

He takes a breath to get himself under control, then says, "Get your unsettlingly discoloured ass out of my face and get back to work."

"Does this earn me a demerit, sir?"

"Do you want one? Because I can paint all over your fucking record in black if that's what you want."

John just smiles and sees himself out.

Fucking humans.

Karkat drops into his chair, jaw significantly less clenched than before.

***

A few nights after the horn thing, Karkat is just about done with official shit, and just about out of patience for the bulge-pull circus these people call a business. He calls John into his office after the last meeting.

“Congratulations, Egbert, you’ve been here half a sweep and this little experiment hasn’t gone horribly awry. I’m sure you knew you’d be watched closely,” (John nods once in acknowledgement) “and somehow—despite your best attempts to prevent this—the people in charge of making these decisions have decided that you did a good job. Far be it from me to question their judgment.

“This decision opens the way for big changes around here. You and the rest of the handful of humans involved in this little beta test proved your race capable of following simple instructions and not getting themselves culled and/or brutally murdered. So you’ll be seeing more humans around here.”

John’s eyebrows go up, and Karkat thinks of those friends who taught him coping mechanisms in the pens. John doesn’t say anything, though, so Karkat continues.

“A side effect of the increased integration will be a somewhat elevated standing among your peers.”

“Does that mean I finally get that promotion, sir?”

“You’re damn right it does,” he says, maybe a little too forcefully. “You earned that perigees ago.”

“And if my ‘peers’ don’t like the idea of an alien being promoted above them...?”

“Then they’ll answer to me. I can cull anyone who makes too big a fuss on grounds of, like, insubordination.” He waves a hand.

John giggles. Karkat feels kind of dumb, and finally releases the sigh he’s been holding in for the last couple weeks.

John steps into his space and sticks out a hand for a tanglegreeting. Karkat obliges, making sure to advertise his exasperation on his face.

Softly, John says, “Thank you, Karkat,” and then... doesn’t let go. He’s smiling. It’s unnerving how much Karkat doesn’t feel the urge to claw his face off for being so _globesy._

“Don’t mention it,” he grumbles.

After a weird moment of eye contact and genuine-seeming gratitude during which Karkat panics a little bit (how long is this hand thing supposed to last, anyway? Is he going to insult John if he lets go too soon? If he doesn’t let go soon enough? Is John going to use this to prank him somehow?), John looks down at their clasped hands. He turns them so that Karkat’s is on top, and his thumb moves to one side so that he can see more of the carapace—except then it moves back, and Karkat realises that John is feeling up his hand. He is getting his fucking xenobiology on, here.

For some reason, Karkat takes that as his cue to do the same. And as soon as he lets himself be aware of it, he is _painfully_ aware of how strong John is. He looks soft and breakable, what with the squishy mammalian fuzz-covered skin he has, but Karkat can feel the hard muscle in his fingers and palm. Even if he can’t see anything from the wrist up, he’d bet on there being more muscles under that button-down shirt.

He’s still being half-stroked by John’s dexterity appendage.

Hesitant, Karkat clears his throat; John looks back up at his face. “Is this your weird non-hate friendship thing again?”

John chuckles, looking a little startled. “Not really.”

They’re still touching. John isn’t saying anything else. Now he’s staring at Karkat’s horns, what the earfucking fuck, does he want an anatomy lesson right here in Karkat’s office _in the middle of the night with the blinds open and dozens of trolls just outside—?!_

“Your lips are actually black, huh?”

Heroically, Karkat does not sputter.

“Yes, they are actually black, what did you—no, on second thought don’t tell me what asinine ideas you had, just get out of my office before I change my mind about that promotion.”

John laughs, but he gives Karkat’s hand a last little squeeze-jiggle before releasing it and turning to walk out.

Karkat slumps into his chair and gets maybe twenty seconds to rub his temples before someone else knocks on his door, letting him know that yes, someone did witness that awkward whatever-it-was between him and the human. Fantastic.

***

It’s another couple perigees of orientation and paperwork and general alien-herding before John and Karkat are alone together again, which hopefully staves off any rumours about them. (Who is he kidding, nothing staves off rumours, ever. Especially not in an office setting, where gossip is the only thing the workers have to look forward to and the only way to keep a hold on their sanity.)

People have been in and out of Karkat’s office all night, so he is on his ass outside the back entrance to the building when John finds him.

“Oh, hey boss! Why are you out here?”

“I was hoping to spend a moment in peace, but I see now that was too much to ask. What do you need, Egbert?”

“Nothing, I was just going home.”

Eyes narrowed, Karkat angles his face straight up at the human. “Skipping the rest of your shift _and_ admitting it to your superior. I have no idea why I thought you were smarter than that.”

“Haha, no, my shift is over. I requested this morning off for my, uh, wriggling day. Remember?”

And Karkat does remember, so he just huffs and looks away, still keeping one eye on John out of habit. “Happy wriggling day. Who’s covering you?”

“Nobody. I finished up the extra work just now.” John slides down the wall to sit next to him. “Mind if I join you?”

“Seems like you already have,” Karkat sighs, too tired to snark properly.

Silence passes semi-comfortably between them, John fiddling with the ends of his sleeves and Karkat deciding that the threat level is low enough to justify a few seconds with his eyes closed. Then John leans into him, bumping their shoulders together, and says, "You look like you could use a night off too."

"You're not my moirail," Karkat returns. It's half-hearted.

"I don't have to be in your pale quadrant to care about you," John says, and Karkat hardly thinks it's worth the energy it would take to turn his face and glare.

"I'm your boss, Egbert. You shouldn't be caring about me, you should be caring about how useful I think you are."

"You think I'm plenty useful."

Dammit. Can't argue that without lying. He doesn't feel like lying.

John is still leaned up against him. It's amazing how naive he acts, though Karkat knows he's heard enough gossip by now to know his way around the quadrants, to know what an overture looks like. There's no way he's unaware of the signals he's giving off. Honestly, Karkat is getting fed up with this sad mockery of an interspecies courtship dance. He's... yeah. He's done with it. He's going to end it.

John is close enough that Karkat only has to open his eyes, turn a bit, lean in a bit, and their faces are inches apart. This is it. Either it'll be the tipping point between them or it'll go terribly wrong, but at least he'll know which way it ends. He registers the way John's irises go thin and the soft breath John takes before he's got all five claws in the human's collar and they're kissing, and it's so _strange_ but it's almost movie-perfect, the way they don't bump face-bits and nobody's teeth get in the way and oh, he can feel John smiling, can feel him shift, and then his softstrong hand is on Karkat's neck in a totally nonthreatening way and...

Wow.

He must be more exhausted than he thought, because he's starting to relax, allowing the movement of John's lips to open his own, gently, and welcoming the too-soft tongue into his mouth. Karkat is starting to think he should pull away, they can't get carried away here, someone might find them—so of course the door bangs open, startling them apart. A trio of trolls files out, their chatter trailing off as they notice the two of them sitting there.

Karkat covers his face with both hands, and it occurs to him not only how completely screwed he is, but also how _incredibly cliche_ this whole encounter has been.

Predictably, John just laughs.


End file.
